I used a range of different platforms in order to discuss my products with my audience, getting feedback through online conferencing/chat rooms like tinychat.com, my Facebook page, class comments and face-to-face. Reaching this range of people from a variety of backgrounds and variety of knowledge (the class being of other media students, whilst online feedback and the face-to-face response was given by those who do not take media), allowed me to gather a range of different responses - this is based on the "Reception Theory", which states that an audience is active or passive depending on the text and the social/experience context of the viewer.
The main feature of our video was its narrative - in our following of a more entropic and hopefully artistic style, we only lightly sketched in a storyline (a boy who has a bike crash, and finds himself in a "dead" realm, interacting with those he finds there), leaving its meaning ambiguous and up for interpretation. This seems to have caused the most division in feedback. Many of the media class wrote that they found the narrative "confusing" - theorist David Gauntlett suggests that, in the traditional approach to Media Studies (Media 1.0), media students are "taught to 'read' the media in appropriate 'critical' style" - that is, looking constantly for logic and analysis from a media perspective, not that of an audience member. With an ambiguous narrative, they instead are required to approach the text with their own opinions. What's strikingly different in my audience interview is how they immediately tried to form ideas about the narrative, ranging from "suicide" to "travelling" - a negotiated reading of the text (as defined by David Morley). This also could be understood as an "aberrant reading" - perhaps the people I asked lacked the "cultural capital" - in this case a higher level of artistic imagination - to understand. It was this witholding of understandable visuals until the final moments where the bike crash was depicted that, whilst perhaps confusing, also had people "guessing what happened next" - engaging with our text. Our providing of a solution at the end in the tying together of our narrative was welcomed - "I like how it all came together in the end". Perhaps in our pursuit of entropy and a more artistic approach, we were isolating some of the audience who were unable to understand the video. A higher level of redundancy, making the video more predictable, and therefore more understandable, may have aided this.
Some responses could be understood as matching the gender of the audience too - in the face-to-face interview, it was Paul who suggested a point to be improved would be the introduction of more male characters - as our target audience was both male and female, it was important that we didn't make one gender feel disconnected - if our production task was to be repeated and improved, I think we should consider more how the audience engage with the gender of characters in the video and respond to that more with the addition of more male actors.
It was noted that our video fitted the genre - our use of sepia-like filters "gave it a vintage 'folky' look", whilst our "locations matched the song" and "setting suited genre". Our face-to-face audience identified more with the "alternative indie" aspect of the music, rather than the video as wholly "folk", though there is an overlap of folk and indie music and representations which could explain this. However, as the whole audience didn't respond to this as 'folk', perhaps we ought to have worked harder on aspects of mise-en-scene and other conventions that usually convey genre.
We started filming midway through January, and from the beginning we were met with some problems. As we've mostly filmed this in a linear fashion (literally, starting with the beginning), we began with the "introduction" scenes. We'd planned for these to be filmed at Red Hill Lane, and were relying on a bright day to help the contrasts between this and the darker sections in the woods. However, it was instead grey and cloudy - and raining. This slowed us up and cut down our filming time as we had to make sure we had enough umbrellas to ensure that neither Al, our main actor, or the camera got wet.
This is the result of our first day of filming - it still needs some editing to even out the colour filters. Beth and me are both particularly pleased with the shot of Al biking under the bridge as the train passes - we hadn't intended it to be shot like that but, realising the train was coming whilst we were filming nearby, we took advantage of the opportunity.
I am subscribed to Charlie McDonnell - Charlieissocoollike- on Youtube, and he is often involved with music, producing it, directing/shooting videos for his musical friends (Alex Day's "Time of Your Life", for example.) This video appeared on his channel a few months back, and has inspired me: even though it is shot in just one room, with one character, it manages to be both amusing and completely successful as a music video, edited simply in a way that we could easily mimic on our own editing software. It uses simple screen-splitting techniques and colour filters, and sound and lip-syncing is both accurate and amusing in its timing. The video is also effective in portraying the obsession with Saskia Hamilton - a clear theme, building to Charlie typing the name in over and over again at his computer.
If an amateur video, shot with a HD camera in a bedroom can look this good and be this successful, hopefully we will be able to create something with a similarly professional look with the equipment and planning we have got.
Beth and I have been finalising the main cast members - we had previously established that perhaps a boy called Alex Rainsford would be able to do the role of the main male character, hence the general appearance of the boy character in the animatic and costume design. However, due to his apparent unavailability at the times we need to film (generally Wednesday afternoons, at which time he would usually still be in college), we had initially attempted to contact another person, Chris Calderon, for the role. He has declined, and it has now come to light that Alex Rainsford may be able to find some extra time on the Wednesday in order to film with us, which would be great.
(Alex on Facebook)
After discussing and shortlisting potential people for the role of the main hanged person who would, of course, get a lot of camera time during the first verse and chorus, we decided that Emma Harrison would be good for the role, especially as her quirky/indie clothing styles fit our ideas for costumes perfectly, as well as the fact that she also does media, and would be able to fully understand and appreciate what we want with our video.
(Emma on Facebook)
Now me and Beth have made a Facebook Event page for both the main characters and everyone in general, inviting some more people to start, and hopefully, as it is an open Event, more will be invited. This will hopefully put us into contact with the large amount of people we'll require as the video progresses towards the end, when the main character is involved with a crowd of the dead people he has rescued. I've provided links to the song and suggestions for costume to ensure they will be prepared for filming.
